This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky. Got a minute?

The baseball season is almost here to get you up to speed.

The excellent new documentary fastballball opens today in select theaters.

Fastball is all about, you guessed it, the heater, the cheese, the Hummer, the hard stuff.

From the perspective of pitchers, hitters, umpires, and scientists who talk about everything from the physics governing the trajectory of the ball, to the physiology of the strain on the pitcher's arm, to the psychology of hurling a potentially deadly projectile at another human being,

to the neuroscience of the batter's perception and reaction.

At high speeds, the ball may appear to the hitter to rise.

Of course the ball is actually still going down due to gravity as it approaches the plate from

any pitcher throwing overhand, no matter how fast.

It's just not falling as much as the batter's brain is accustomed to from watching slower pitches.

But I did not know till I saw the movie that for some hitters facing the very hardest throwers, the ball can completely disappear.

The idea of the ball disappearing was really fascinated to me because all these Hall of

Famers were talking,

they all were saying the same thing,

that the, you know, these few really special guys,

the COFaxes and the fellers, that the bowl would disappear.

Fastball director Jonathan Hawkock after a preview of the film March 22nd at the Yogi Berry Museum and Learning Center on the campus of Montclair State University in New Jersey.

So I mentioned that to these professors of perception and recognition and all that, and

they immediately understood because they explained that when the ball, when the eye tracks an object in motion you're not

actually on the ball the whole way you're actually racing your eyes ahead to where

you think the ball's going to go.

And most of us can go about a tenth of a second ahead

...